Website Development, Email Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Tools & Resources

by Jon Ricerca http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

Long ago, it was the SEO consensus that dynamic URLs (those with a question mark in them) weren’t indexed by the major search engines. Later, the SEO consensus was that Google indexed some URLs with question marks, but ranked them lower. Currently it seems like the SEO consensus is that Google indexes dynamic URLs just fine and ranks them right along with other URLs unless there is a long number after the question mark or an “id=” in it which might indicate a session ID.

That a lot of SEO theories. It’s probably time to get the facts. The methodology used to find this answer is very simple. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and four associates using Yahoo and Google. I then tallied the URLs that contained a question mark for each ranking.

Those results were further refined by converting them into a percentage of the total pages found. Here is the graph showing Google and Yahoo results:

http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dg04.gif

(Note to Webmasters: Feel free to hot link or even copy the above graph to your own site. Also feel free to remove this note to webmasters.)

The X-axis shows the rankings from 1 through 8. The Y- axis shows the percentage of URLs found that contained a question mark.

The first thing I note is that both Yahoo and Google do contain URLs that contain a question mark. Those major search engines DO include some URLs with question marks.

The second thing to notice is the small percentages for both Google an Yahoo. The average percentage of URLs with question marks is only about 5% on Google and 3% on Yahoo. It isn’t known what percentage of total URLs have question marks, but it seems very likely that it is a much higher percentage. The difference between Yahoo and Google further shows that Yahoo doesn’t include as many dynamic URLs as Google.

It is clear from the data that Google ranks dynamic URLs (those containing a question mark) lower on average than other URLs. The ranking correlation is a -42 on a scale of -100 to +100. That same bias doesn’t seem to occur on Yahoo where the ranking correlation is a -7 on the same scale. If dynamic URLs make it into the Yahoo index, they rank as well as other URLs.

Advice: Don’t use dynamic URLs (URLs with question marks in them).

Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com. For access to the other SERF reports, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

Filed under: Optimization on October 29th, 2007 No Comments »

Over the years, we have used a wide variety of norton products

BUT No more!

When attempting to install a version of Norton Utilities (not on any functioning hard drives) we discovered that we had to pay $35 just to talk to someone to tell them that they locked us out of a legitimate program.

We could have upgraded to the newer version, but why should we pay for a new version of software that won’t run on our legacy test machine when we own a valid license?

Our answer, tell norton to take a hike; after all even Microsoft will work with you for free when their system tags you as having installed an application too many times.

Click on the Norton Product name below and you will find an application for free or at least less than what norton charges and they work just as well! as Nortons products.

Filed under: Software - Utilities, Tech Support on October 27th, 2007 2 Comments »

If you want to discover how to communicate at your very best there are a number of proven, highly effective ways to make a big difference in your communication skills.

• How To Communicate Better Than Ever Before

Filed under: Communications on October 19th, 2007 No Comments »

The mission of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people. Through its Web sites, the Library offers broad public access to a wide range of information, including historical materials.

• The Library of Congress

Filed under: Resources on October 13th, 2007 No Comments »

<!– Redirect to another webpage/website after a given time period (in this case 10 seconds) –>

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”10;url=http://www.wikipedia.org/” />

This method of redirect is not recommended for use with Search Engine Optimization.

Filed under: Coding on October 6th, 2007 No Comments »

When hirinng a sub-contractor or small non-incorporated company, the IRS requires you file this information for anyone/company you pay over $600 in a year.

Download the w9 form and send it to your wub-contractor to fill out and return.

• The IRS and hiring a sub-contractor

Filed under: Payment Solutions on October 1st, 2007 No Comments »